Right Place, Right Time......(Taxi Driver story)

As I mentioned in my previous post, this weekend I travelled alone to Devon for my first in-person day of my 200-hour yoga teacher training.

For someone who relies heavily on a consistent morning routine to stay regulated, the day began in complete chaos.

I woke up at 7:45am.

My taxi was due at 8:00am.

I couldn't believe it!

Was it the deep sleep? The unfamiliar bed? The darkness? Being alone with no one to disturb me?

Whatever the reason, my nervous system went straight into panic. I jumped into my usual ice-cold shower, pulled on clothes, and bolted out of the door annoyed with myself, feeling flustered, rushed, and already behind.

Not exactly the grounded, mindful start I’d imagined.

And then I got into my taxi.

My driver (Mr Taxi Driver) asked what I was doing for the day. I explained, the training, the significant shift in direction career-wise, and our plans to move to Devon. That was what opened the door.

What followed wasn’t the small talk you'd usually encounter or avoid in a taxi.

Humbly and with gentle context, he shared that he had been stabbed while working just weeks before lockdown. He was working as a carer at the time, supporting someone else in their home, when he was met by the person’s son, angry, distressed, scared. That encounter changed his life in an instant. He spent time in a coma, followed by ten months unable to see his wife and young children as the world shut down around him with covid restrictions.

His mental and physical health understandably collapsed.

On return home, he spent every day in fear, lying in bed.

One afternoon, he heard one of his children suggest they go and get Daddy to do something with them. The other replied, quietly and matter-of-factly, “No… Daddy can’t do that.”

He said hearing those words broke something open in him. A painful clarity stirred in him and he knew he never wanted his children to think of him as someone who couldn’t. Someone absent. Someone unreachable.

That steady love from his wife alongside the presence of his children became the reason he kept going on the days when everything in him wanted to shut down.

Eventually, terrified but encouraged by his wife so they could make a cup of tea, he began taking one small daily step: walking to the local supermarket to buy milk. Every day. Crying as he paid. Just trying to get out of the house.

The staff noticed.

One day, one man approached him to ask what was wrong, why he was there every day, upset, crying. When he explained, the member of staff told him when his break was and asked him to come in at that time every day, so he wouldn’t be alone. He always said that the man stood by him.

I noticed that word, "stood" because he mentioned later that physically, he couldn’t stand, he was in a wheelchair. But what he meant by stood was his strong presence. Loyalty. Someone choosing, day after day, not to walk away. When he wasn’t working, he asked them to do this on his behalf.

They did this for weeks. Months.

Until one day, he no longer needed to come.......

He didn’t need the support in the same way anymore. The staff felt the loss too because that shared purpose had mattered to them.

So they marked it. They asked him to come in one final time. The staff and public clapped. Cheered. Wished him well and shared his journey in awe over the tannoy as he left. Wow.

He told me that recovery didn’t arrive all at once. It came in fragments. In routines. In people standing beside him when he couldn’t stand alone. In finding purpose again, not in what he’d lost, but in what he could still give.

He shared how this way of thinking now shapes the work he does with others to process trauma. One woman he supports was a dancer who lost everything she loved in a car accident and was left in a wheelchair. With that loss came grief, identity collapse, and a deep sense of purposelessness.

Slowly, through his support and reflection, she found a way to stay connected to her passion, not by returning to what had been, but by transforming it. She now teaches others to dance, sharing her knowledge and creativity, and is on the path to becoming a choreographer. Her purpose didn’t disappear; it evolved. And through that evolution, she’s now inspiring others in ways she never expected.

As a coach, that stayed with me, as a reminder that purpose isn’t found by forcing ourselves back into old shapes. It’s found by learning how to adapt without abandoning who we are.

This is his story, not mine to share and I know I can’t do it justice the way he can. I’m holding only a small piece of it here because of what it gave me that morning. He is unlikely to ever read this, but if he did: you are a very brave man, and people are lucky you are still here.

By the time I arrived to my yoga training, something had shifted. I felt steadier than I had when I’d left in chaos. As if that conversation had started something settling inside me. And still, when I arrived, I felt all over the place. Unable to string a sentence together properly. Hyper-aware of myself. Slightly scrambled and self-conscious in that familiar way I know so well now.

It was a quiet reminder of how easily a neurodivergent brain can be thrown by transition alone. A disrupted morning. A new environment. New people. Moving from one place to the next. All of it impacts how we show up, even when we’re doing something we deeply want to do.

That day in our training we were introduced to the philosophy of yoga, beginning with the Bhagavad Gita, a dialogue about duty, fear, purpose, and learning to act from alignment rather than force. Addressing the moral and spiritual dilemmas of life.

It felt very fitting. Like I was exactly where I was meant to be, even with the messy start.

So much of my life has been about striving, controlling, performing, proving. Chasing the next thing that might finally make me feel settled.

Dopamine in disguise.

Superficial “stuff” standing in for safety and meaning.

This felt different.

This felt like learning how to be instead of constantly trying to become.

Yoga, for me, isn’t about perfect postures. It’s about regulation. Awareness. Learning how to sit with discomfort without running from it. The same skills that neurodivergent women are so rarely taught.

And this is why yoga and coaching now feel inseparable to me.

Both are about working with yourself.

Both are about listening instead of forcing.

Both are about building a life that fits your nervous system, your brain, your reality.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m still very much on the path. But for the first time in a long time, I’m not pushing against myself to get there.

I’m practising.

And that feels like the beginning of something that actually makes sense.

And finally, a quiet thank you to Mr Taxi Driver, for the openness, the generosity, honesty and perspective that added so much meaning to the start of this new journey.